This morning's red post collection features an update on the preseason support changes mentioned yesterday, a heads up on the PBE forums switching to the new community site, info on the Team Builder's PBE testing, a warm PBE welcome from the Relaunch team , Morello discussing non Linear scaling, a few notes on where Alistar is headed, and a look at the Rammus sculpt Grumpy Monkey did at PAX earlier this year.

Continue reading for more info!

More on Preseason Support Changes

As with the other preseason posts, I've updated the preseason support overview with tons of additional red posts and dicussion from the reddit thread. Be sure to check it out for more on the future of supports and even a preview of a new preseason item "Martyr's Call"!

PBE Forum Switchover

If you tried to go on the PBE forums today, you may have noticed the normal forum has vanished and the link now redirects straight to the community PBE site. This is intentional and Riot has elected to switchover to the new system to better support the upcoming PBE changes.

As you may have noticed, we’ve closed down the regional PBE forums and have moved to a single PBE community. In combination with the recent update to PBE applications and access, this step will benefit the overall PBE effort through better collection of feedback & bug reporting by:

Connecting the single worldwide PBE game platform to a single worldwide PBE discussion hub

Better raising visibility of the biggest tester concerns through the community platform

Allowing Rioters to concentrate their efforts and more quickly identify widespread issues

Going forward, players from all regions will be able look through PBE community discussions, but only PBE accounts with currently enabled PBE access will be able to post. We want the PBE community to maintain a razor-sharp focus on feedback & reporting by testers with hands-on experience of current PBE content. There are plenty of spaces where players actively discuss PBE content previews without the burden of providing exhaustive feedback, bug repro steps, etc. and we’re NOT abandoning those discussions. We just want to disentangle them from the feedback loops we specifically charge PBE testers with contributing to.

The PBE community is ultimately an extension of the PBE itself, and we’re confident these changes will facilitate better PBE bug & feedback reporting and community collaboration."

"We definitely have work to do to bring this new community site up to our needs for PBE (like being able to upload logs or larger .rofl files, etc).

If you can think of additional things PBE testers may need on this new community site, suggest them here!"

Team Builder on the PBE

As you may have already read from our 10/25 PBE update coverage, the new Team Builder feature is up on the PBE! For the next few days between 1 and 5 pm PST, Team Builder will enabled on the PBE testing and Riot is inviting summoners to come give this WIP version a whirl!

Team Builder’s coming to PBE today! From 1 – 5pm PST over the next three days (Oct. 25th – 27th), select PBE testers will be able to try out this new feature and give us invaluable feedback on its design and functionality.

I’m excited to get your hands on Team Builder for the first time, but we’re trying something very different with this PBE Release. Team Builder is a complete re-design of Champion Select, which means it’s complicated and there are a lot of changes. One of our goals is to collaborate with players on this feature, and collect feedback throughout the development process.
--What does this mean for players?

As players, you’ll be able to help us test the feature extremely early in the process, and work directly with developers to evolve the feature over time.

PBE is a smaller server, so queue times will be longer, and gameplay experiences will not represent a Live server. Matches might be very unbalanced as players of all skill levels will appear in the same match, but our focus is on testing the feature and collecting your feedback.

Many features will be Work-In-Progress (WIP) or not working in Team Builder, for example:

Currently turned off or incomplete:

Skin Selection

Role Selection

Currently, we’re only testing Position Selection and the “Any Role” option

Friend Invites from Friends List

Match Found Ceremony

Dynamic Matchmaking Adjustments

Estimated Wait Times

Anti-Abuse System

How often will there be PBE tests for Team Builder?

We don’t have a fixed timeline, and it will depend on the feedback we collect in the tests. We’d like to host a PBE test with players once every few weeks.

How do I get involved and help make Team Builder awesome?

VonBurgermeister has a thread here that has instructions for what types of testing we’re focused on for Team Builder this round.

RiotDoctahWayne has a thread here that will be collecting information on bugs you’ve found in Team Builder.

Post general comments and game design questions in this thread!

To participate in future beta testing for League of Legends, apply for beta access here.
Lyte"

"As we mentioned last week, Team Builder’s a new way to queue for normal blind pick games that matches players based on their preferred roles and their chosen champion’s play style. Whether you’re looking to suit up a perfect five-man poke comp around Jayce and Nid, or you’re itching to unleash a wombo combo or two, Team Builder’s got the tools to bring the right players together.

Fire up Team Builder and join or create a game either as a captain or a solo player. After selecting their own role, position and champion, captains create their team by indicating what’s needed in each remaining position. They can go with something familiar if they want, or they can try to break the enemy team’s brains by assembling five assassins in the jungle. It’s totally up to them. Meanwhile, solo players indicate the role, position and champion they’re looking to try out, and Team Builder works away in the background to find a suitable team.

Once a team is found, Team Builder brings the players into the game lobby to meet the rest of their teammates. Captains accept or decline players to fill the slots they specified, and accepted players then choose whether they want to join or leave the lobby. Leaving places them back into the Team Builder queue, while players that join can start selecting their runes and masteries, and chat with their new teammates. When the team’s ready to roll, the captain sends the team into matchmaking.

As with all PBE releases, Team Builder’s in its infancy, and we’ll cultivate it based on your feedback and testing . The feature’s going to have a big impact in-game, so we’re going to keep it on PBE until the time’s right. It’s available for testing for the next three days from 1 – 5pm PST, so now’s the perfect time to give it a spin and let us know what you think."

When asked if team builder will eventually be moved into ranked or draft modes, Lyte commented:

"Team Builder is basically a re-design of Champion Select. We're trying a lot of experiments in Team Builder, so we ultimately decided to open it up as a separate queue. Depending on the data we collect and the lessons we learn, we may start adopting some of the lessons into the other queues.

But for now, we're just focused on iteration and making the best Champion Select experience possible."

"There's a lot of changes and new features to Champion Select in Team Builder, and we expect a period of learning. For example, we've never had a mini-map that displays your team composition and strategy, and never had "ready checks" in League of Legends before. As players learn where to find and how to use this information, we'll see some of the initial confusion die down."

"Because PBE is a smaller server, queue times will be longer than usual and not representative of a live environment. Because common compositions tend to be more popular, they'll definitely have shorter queue times."

Riot Lobster also stepped in to reply to someone suggesting a Play Again option after you complete a game with friends or an awesome team:

"Currently Team Builder does not support the Play Again option, but we know how helpful it is in getting back into game quickly so we're keeping track of that work. Thanks for the report kazuya!"

A Warm Welcome from Relaunch

With all the discussion shifting to the new PBE community, Ququroonpopped up with a warm welcome from the relaunch team and a request for feedback on the relaunch team!

"Salutations to you, PBE bros and ladybros!

I am Ququroon, and I do QA for the Relaunch team! As a team, we actively strive to ensure that the quality of existing champions is brought in line with our raised quality bar. Relaunches receive a lot of love and care from the PBE, so I wanted to greet all the new folks who are now a part of the PBE.

Currently we have Sivir on the PBE. She will be out on Live really soon, and it’s thanks to reports from you guys. Thank you very much! While we wait for the next Relaunch to hit the PBE (Soon!™), I wanted to post a warm-up discussion for feedback. This should also help getting everybody (myself included) comfortable with the new forum style.

Who would you like to see Relaunched?

We have a very large backlog, but a few of them do stand out!

If you could change one thing about a prior Relaunch (sans balance stuff), what would you change?

This could help us be aware of areas for improvement! We’re constantly striving to improve as a team.

I look forward to your awesome posts in the present, and in the future! This’ll be a blast!"

"Agreed. He fills a very niche role, but perhaps it's a little too niche right now.

As far as his visuals go, are you satisfied with them now, or would you want to see that too?"

Combat Text, Ceremony, and Particle Changes on PBE

Continuing to fill up the PBE community after the forum switchover, Super Nomegeta has posted up a thread regarding the new combat text, ceremony, and particle changes now on the PBE for testing.

"Hey guys,

Over the next few patches, we'll be making incremental updates to League of Legends that should not only raise the visual bar, but also improve functionality, clarity, and satisfaction. What you'll find on PBE right now are a few of these upcoming changes.

New Combat Text! Both font and colors have been updated. We feel these changes better suit the style of League of Legends (and are more readable).

Improved Last-Hit Ceremony! Font animations, gold particle, and sound have been tweaked to provide more satisfying last hits.

Improved Level-Up Ceremony! Likewise, a new particle and sound have been added to make leveling feel more impactful.

New Health and Mana Potion Particles! Gaze in wonder as you're enveloped by green and blue stars and swirls.

I actually DON'T value linear-only scaling for the reasons you mention. I think there are issues that exist because of this, and the benefits of clarity are so minor than I think they take a back seat to good pacing and balance here.

You'll probably see more non-linear scaling arrive in balance when we think it can fix the problem. It's not a silver bullet, of course, but I think a valuable tool (ESPECIALLY on ults since you can predict early- mid- and late-game based on that) to us to use."

What about Alistar?

With all the preseason support talk, one summoner inquired about Alistar and if the design team has any plans for him in the near future. Morello replied:

"We agree Alistar needs work on this front. Statikk specifically has wanted to do some heavy lifting here.

The core problems that need to be fixed, outside of a nerfs/buffs thing:

1) Alistar is a nightmare when he can roam or jungle. Him being powerful now pushes him out of support and into this role (we've seen this cycle). We need to make changes that make him a great duo lane tank/support, but not let him be a roamer.

2) Alistar's E needs some gameplay decision-making. It costs a lot of mana, but needs to be used a lot - not super satisfying or interesting.

3) Alistar's identity is awesome; linebacker to the max. We want to keep this identity.
No details, and no pure numerics yet, though I do believe we want to get to this during preseason."

Rammus Sculpt from Pax Prime Demo

grumpy monkey popped up over on reddit to share a sculpt he did of Rammus during PAX Prime earlier this year.

"Sup guys! I was at the Wacom booth doing demos during pax prime, and I sculpted this little Rammus. I went ahead and gave him a little bit of love. Just thought I'd share!